G4 ministers support cause for becoming Permanent Members.
By Sujeet Rajan
NEW YORK: India’s External Affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and her colleagues from the G4 countries – Germany, Brazil and Japan – have come out strongly for UN Security Council reforms, and released a joint statement supporting their candidatures for Permanent Members at the Council.
Meeting on the sidelines of the opening of the 69th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, on Thursday, Swaraj, Luiz Alberto Figueiredo Machado, the minister of External Relations of Brazil; Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs of Germany; and Fumio Kishida, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Japan, voiced their concern that 50 years after the first and only time that the Security Council was reformed, discussions are still at a stalemate.
In a statement, the four ministers urged their counterparts attending the General Assembly meet to fulfill by September 2015, the much needed reforms. They also reaffirmed the importance of developing countries, including from Africa, to be represented in both the permanent and non-permanent categories of an enlarged Council.
Swaraj had on Wednesday met with seven other foreign ministers: UK secretary of state Philip Hammond, Sudanese minister of foreign affairs Ali Ahmed Karti, Maldives foreign affairs minister Dunya Maumoon, Norwegian foreign affairs minister Borge Brende, Kyrgyz foreign affairs minister Abdyldaev Erlan Bekeshovich, Greece deputy Prime Minister Evangelos Venizelos and Nigerian foreign affairs minister Aminu Wali.
She has lined up bilateral meetings with Machado, Bangladeshi Foreign Affairs Minister Abul Hassan Mahmud Ali and Chinese Foreign Affairs Minister Wang Yi.
Swaraj will also participate in a bilateral meeting with Egyptian Foreign Affairs Minister Sameh Hassan Shoukry, besides participating in a ministerial level meeting of the Committee on Palestine.